For the Rest of Our Lives
by Hekko
Summary: Even if he left them behind, T-Bag still remembers his family... and his family remember him. Starts at 2-20 epizode Panama and goes backwards from there.
1. I Want to Be Your Teddy Bear

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the guys from Prison Break, innocent, guilty, convicted or free. It's hard to admit, but when I'm done with them all, I have to return them to Paul Scheuring, 20th Century Fox Television, Adelstein-Parouse Productions, and Original Television in an original wrapping and unharmed.  
I make no money, I mean no harm.

* * *

It had been the sex that had ruined it, T-Bag mused as he toyed with a dark wig arranged on his prosthetic hand. He smoothed the hair on the wig before he let it slide off of his hand and crumple on the table, a dark reminder of a pretty dream that had turned out wrong in the end.

He couldn't come back. He couldn't, because - as he reminded himself with a wince - Susan had wanted him to leave. And he had. He had left her. Forever. As she had wanted him to.

Repeating it was like stabbing himself, over and over, and turning the knife in the wound, but he couldn't stop himself anyway. It made him feel grateful for the inevitable knock on the door when the new girl arrived. He let her in and offered her a drink. He gulped down his own measure of the golden liquid to wash away the taste of the first one - she had been pretty enough and she had had a nice voice but in the end she had spoilt the game by being too enthusiastic about sex. Susan had never been so eager and dirty and the girl had given the game away by that.

He watched the girl as he was laying out the rules. She had bright eyes and seemed to be smart enough. She even let him put the wig on her head without any protest and looked very much like Susan _who he couldn't come back to anymore_ afterwards. He smiled, letting his mind to do one last cold check before the game began, and as he remembered to warn the girl against too much keenes she became his Susan and he became once again her Teddy.

The pain he had felt ever since Susan had sent him off numbed. It didn't take him long to fall in the trap he had set up for himself. Soon he was basking in Susan's healing presence again and it was just the two of them together and everything was fine and everything was going to be perfect for the rest of their lives. Floating on the sheer bliss, he let the time pass until the girl fell out of the character.

Money. It always came back to money, disregarding whether you had them or lacked them, and T-Bag found it extremely ironic Susan would complain about him not giving her enough when there was still this heap of happy cash in his backpack. Only it wasn't Susan, he remembered with a throb of pain, his Susan was thousand of miles away and couldn't be reached and this was a whore mouthing off at him, and he shot back, aiming to hurt.

I dont know who this Susie-Q bitch is, but no wonder she wants nothing to do with you, the whore replied heatedly. The world disappeared behind a red curtain. _Susie-Q bitch._ She was no bitch - she was a saint. T-Bag acted on an automatic, unable to control his rising anger, being controlled by it instead. He might or might not hear someone screaming and someone else shouting.

When the red curtain rose, the girl was lying dead on the bed, eyes wide open, face contorted in horror.

He couldn't stay there.

But he couldn't go back to Susan. She had to look after the children and the children had to go to the school and he couldn't just hide in their house and she had been right, of course, as she always had been, his house wasn't fit to accomodate a family. He had to find a way to fix it, and it wouldn't be easy to hire workmen to do the job while he was being on the run.

"Stop it." His own voice sounded rough to him, as if he himself had been screaming wildly, but it stopped the mad train of thoughts that had been going faster and faster in his mind. First things first - he had to clean up after himself, pack up his stuff and leave before someone came looking for the girl.

He dragged her body to the bathroom and dropped it in the tube. Everything bloodied followed - there was a lot of blood. Had he been hitting her? He couldn't remember, but there was blood on his hands and arms and his bathrobe as well, so he filled the sink with hot water and made sure to scrub it all away.

He checked himself in the mirror above the sink and later again in the lift to make sure not a drop of her blood remained on him. Just as the lift opened at the ground floor he remembered the wig - it was an excellent one - which he had forgotten to pack. He'd have to buy another.

The pain was back, full force. He missed her terribly and he tried to distract himself by watching the people he was passing. There was a rush and he tried to guess from the faces of the security men who were running towards the lifts how much they _knew_. That turned out to be a mistake. One of them saw something in T-Bag's face - he turned - T-Bag could feel his eyes digging into his quickly retreating back - and there came the outcry. He was made and he had to run.

It would never end this way, he knew. He had to be more careful, or he'd never see his lovely Susan again. And as much as he longed for her, he couldn't even call her, for her own safety and for the safety of the children. One day, when everything would have calmed down, he would be able to come back and fix it and they would be together for the rest of their lives - but he couldn't afford to screw up now, not more than he had screwed up already. Now, he had to run.

But one day... hell, he _knew_ she was waiting.


	2. Little Big Brother

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the guys from Prison Break, innocent, guilty, convicted or free. It's hard to admit, but when I'm done with them all, I have to return them to Paul Scheuring, 20th Century Fox Television, Adelstein-Parouse Productions, and Original Television in an original wrapping and unharmed.  
I make no money, I mean no harm.

* * *

It was a long and troubled night. Zach's dreams were haunted with tall disguised figures that loomed from every shadow, and as the figures were closing on him, they all bore Teddy's face - but not the face of the good old Teddy. The figures had this disturbed expression and wild eyes and they threatened him with either the gun, or a fearful hook instead of a hand.

Zach woke up, startled, half certain he had heard his sister cry out. For a second, his room was lit up by a flash of lightening, and instantly thunder followed. He slipped out of his bed and quickly closed the window - he had to reopen it to pull in the curtain that had been sucked out by the wind. Something rattled on the floor.

He felt insanely scared of the unknown thing. Insanely - yeah, good word - when he had heard Teddy talking to Mom like... like _that_, down in the kitchen, he had thought Teddy had gone insane, but later Mom had admitted she had known - he had been evil all along. He hadn't been at an oil rig, no - he had been in prison, and she had known.

Zach had never felt so angry with anybody as he felt angry with Mom for not telling them earlier. Or at least telling him - he was a big boy already - she should have trusted him with this. He would have taken care of things, as a man of the family should.

Ignoring the fact that he had tried to take care of things and failed, quite naturally, facing a grown-up and malicious man, Zach bent to examine what the storm had brought into his room. In the darkness, it was hard to guess, aside from feeling it was made of plastic, but soon lightening revealed he was holding a little bird, robbed of its feathery wings, a bird he had seen previously floating above Gracie's bed.

He was out in the passage in a flash, bursting into his sister's room in a manner that proved, beyond any doubt, he wasn't mature enough to take care of big things - no matter how willing he was.

"Gracie?" She turned from the window and her face was the colour of cheese. Zach took a few steps in her direction, suddenly unsure and kind of shy. How does a big scared brother treat a small scared sister?

In the end he hugged her, as he had seen on TV, and lamely patted her back. A flash of lightening and a clap of thunder later, Gracie relaxed and sighed and let herself be led to her bed.

"You okay?" Zach asked when she had snuggled under the cover.

"Thanks," Gracie whispered and faintly smiled.

It wasn't until he himself climbed back in the bed when he realised she hadn't really answered his question.

* * *

**A/N:** I don't think the ages of the kids have ever been mentioned directly and I'm very bad at guessing, but it seemed to me Zach was older than Gracie. Anyone with a different opinion is welcome to dispute ;)


	3. Big Little Sister

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the guys from Prison Break, innocent, guilty, convicted or free. It's hard to admit, but when I'm done with them all, I have to return them to Paul Scheuring, 20th Century Fox Television, Adelstein-Parouse Productions, and Original Television in an original wrapping and unharmed.  
I make no money, I mean no harm.

* * *

Gracie woke up with a start. It was still dark outside and the house was unfamiliar and quiet. She crept to the door, peeked into the passage and - satisfied with both the door opening freely and the lack of response from the corridor - let the door slightly ajar and crept back into the bed, where she sat with her back to the wall and her knees hugged to her chest. Her feet were cold and she rubbed them on the sheet to warm them up.

She didn't feel sleepy anymore. Her mind was vainly trying to process all that had happened during the last few days - seeing Teddy again, and then seeing him turning into someone so strange and distant and evil - being kidnapped and being freed - she didn't even know how she should feel about that, aside from being confused, because one of the paramedics had told her it had been okay to feel confused about something like that.

She had asked him whether it had been okay to feel corn-fused about that, too, and Mom had nearly choked when she had heard her. Gracie didn't understand why she had said it. It hadn't seemed funny anymore. But she had had to say it and she had had to ask, "Why did Teddy do that, Mom?" because she had been unable to carry that question unspoken. Mom hadn't answered, but the paramedic had tipped her little chin up and explained, very gently, that Teddy had been an ill man and that he hadn't known what he had been doing to them and that he had needed to be helped.

Gracie still couldn't grasp that. If Teddy needed help, why hadn't he asked them to help him? She, for one, would gladly give all her earthly possession to achieve that, especially if that would mean Teddy would be his old self. And how could he not know what he had been doing to them? Gracie shuffled uneasily. Her gaze fell on a little flock of artificial birds hung above her bed. They were swinging in the air and their small beady eyes were seemingly winking, as they were alternately dark or bright, reflecting the little light from the outside.

On an impulse, Gracie stood up on her bed and one by one plucked the birds from the aerial construction. They were light, their little bodies made of thin plastic and wings of fluffy feathers. She carried them to the window, which she opened wide. There was a lightning in the distance. The wind, non-existent several minutes ago, brought first drops of rain into Gracie's face.

One by one, as carefully as she had freed them from their respective strings, she took each of the birds, lifted them to her lips, whispered a random name and threw them out of the window. The wind, stronger and stronger with every second, grabbed every bird and raised it high above the silent house.

"Teddy," Gracie called the last one, her favourite, and with a resolution threw him into the storm. The wind took the last bird as eagerly as the previous ones - and flung it into the next window.

Gracie forced the window closed and stepped back with a strangled cry. Eyes filled with horror, she realised - too early in her life - that not everybody could be helped.


	4. I Wish I Could Let You

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the guys from Prison Break, innocent, guilty, convicted or free. It's hard to admit, but when I'm done with them all, I have to return them to Paul Scheuring, 20th Century Fox Television, Adelstein-Parouse Productions, and Original Television in an original wrapping and unharmed.  
I make no money, I mean no harm.

* * *

It wasn't until the house grew silent that Susan broke down. Up to that moment she had been too busy - talking to the police, then talking to the feds who wanted to hear exactly the same she had just told the police, only twice, calming down the children and talking to the paramedics who had been constantly offering them "something to calm down". She had turned the paramedics down and now regretted it - now, when the darkness settled down on the still unknown house and the silence roared into her ears.

She wept. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she pressed her face into the pillow to muffle her sobs. When finally she quieted down, she was wide awake and too restless to fall asleep. She got up and stood at the window. There were no stars outside, the sky was cloudy and it was as still as death. Susan toyed with the curtain. It was all so damn complicated.

Her first boyfriend, Tony, had been a beautiful boy with a cherub face, almond-shaped eyes and an angelical smile. He had played his charms on her so successfully she had asked him to spend a week-end with her when her parents had decided to celebrate their anniversary out of the town.

She had given her virginity to that beautiful boy and had fallen asleep on her parents' luxurious bed. When she had awoken, Tony had been gone - and all the cash and everything that could have been sold quickly as well.

Susan let the curtain fall and turned abruptly, angried by the memory. She had been so foolish - but it had gone downhill from there. She couldn't remember ever having had a decent boyfriend, a boyfriend who hadn't turned out bad in the end. And her husband - Mr. Charles Ernest Hollander - who had left her for a younger woman when Gracie had been only three months old - her husband had been a total failure.

When she had met Teddy, she recalled, she had believed her time of happiness had come. There hadn't been a thing she would have changed on him: he had been gentle to her and good to her children and altogether charming.

Of course, she should have known better. He had been her boyfriend and she should have known all her boyfriends turned out bad in the end. She turned away from the window and impatiently paced her solitary bedroom. She had done the right thing, turning him in and turning him down. He was a murderer, and no amount of wishing could change him. But she did wish - oh, she wished so fervently she could have her Teddy back - and she knew she couldn't.

She sat down on the bed and touched the pillow. In all the haze of the previous evening, she hadn't changed the sheets, and it was the same fabric Teddy had been touching the night before that. That made her feel torn, and she jumped to her feet again.

She had her wishes and she had her responsibilities. She had done the right thing, she reminded herself. But as tears again threatened to spill from her eyes, she couldn't help thinking that murderer or not, all in all, Teddy had been the best man of her life.


End file.
